Lateral leaves vs Sugar leaves

Well, not really a newbie per se but I have a question that I have searched for on google and RIU with no solid answer. The question is: Can sugar leaves be trimmed when you want the plant to stop growing and have the lateral leaves do the rest of the work until harvest? Or, will the plant still grow from the lateral leaves? I'm thinking that as soon as the lateral branches have 1 or 2 nodes on any of them, chop off the sugar leaves and let the laterals finish the job. Will the quality of nugs still be in the same category minus the yield? I don't care for yield but I do for a pleasant smoking experience. Tips? Explain please. Thanks ^_^

offer your plant less light, perhaps even less nutrients until harvest to slow the growth....?

herpert derpert said:

offer your plant less light, perhaps even less nutrients until harvest to slow the growth....?

Click to expand...

I'm not going to do either because I'm happy with my progress. Just curious about the effects of sugar leaves gone and total height growth without them. The real question is about the leaves. What total effect does the Sugar leaves vs Lateral leaves have on the overall plant height vs Bud Development. I'm talking about when the Lateral branches are big enough to sustain bud growth on their own. Quality is an emphasis too & so I was wondering if anyone with experience can share some light on the matter. +rep for a verifiable answer.

I guess I didn't explain myself so maybe I should ask: Are the leaves on lateral branches also called sugar leaves? I want to leave those alone and rip off the leaves coming off the main stalk. Well, already have because they were more than 50% yellow or decaying. Anyone have an answer? I looked high and low for this specific answer.

whats the diffrence between sugar leaves and lateral leaves??
would i call them bud and fan leaves?? mab just tomAto tomato???

All of the leaves store sugar, but most of the sugar is sent to the roots (ie. the symbiotic relationship between roots and fungi, where fungi feed off the sugars in the roots and plants inturn get fixed nitrogen). Trimming them will only harm the plant. Put it this way, if I were to amputate your arm, you now have lost complete function of one part of your body. You can not grab a coke like you could before.

Now put that in perspective of your plant. If you trim a leaf off, it now has decreased the amount of photosynthesis that it is doing to make sugars that are used for bud growth. This is why methods sucha as lst have been used, to expose lower leaves to light, so that they are getting optimal PAR light therefore increasing the efficiency of the leaf and the overall goal of the plant (make buds to carry seeds)

hope this helps!

I personally wouldn't mess with any of the leaves (especially if already in flowering). Sounds like you want your plants to bush out more, right?

purpz said:

I personally wouldn't mess with any of the leaves (especially if already in flowering). Sounds like you want your plants to bush out more, right?

Click to expand...

It's not that. I want the bud sites to get more light. I'm using an unconventional method of lighting: Xenon 4300K 110W, one 26w 2700K CFL and 6 CCFL red tubes. It's quite a bit of light for such little lights but light penetration is no more than 2 feet away. The leaves on the bud sites are close to half the size of the leaves on the main stalk and there are double the leaves on the lateral branches. In total, my guess is that there is about the same amount of surface area on the lateral branches than there was on the leaves that were off of the main stem.

The reason why most of the sugar leaves are gone is because they were dying and easily were getting tugged off. I'm not using store bought nutes and simply using elemental sulfur and unsulfured molasses for food. No nitrogen is being used except what is available in the soil... all natural, all organic grow.


Leaf cupping is due to high heat. It gets around 90-95 in my room.

xeno, I dont think the bud sites even need light bro. The leaves need the light, there is absolutely no reason for the buds too absorb light. Look into Stomata on google and check out their function.

mattman said:

xeno, I dont think the bud sites even need light bro. The leaves need the light, there is absolutely no reason for the buds too absorb light. Look into Stomata on google and check out their function.

Click to expand...

Not the buds themselves but the bud sites with leaves and all. I don't plan on ripping all of the green off and leaving the buds exposed by themselves as that would be futile. The leaves give the buds most of their food. The question is: Can the main stalk leaves be torn down when lateral leaves are big enough to sustain the bud sites. Picture is posted for reference... and what impact will it have on overall quality.

rollinronan said:

whats the diffrence between sugar leaves and lateral leaves??
would i call them bud and fan leaves?? mab just tomAto tomato???

Click to expand...

That's what I'm asking here. I don't know if they are sugar leaves too or have another name.

i know that fan leaves produce energy for vegatative growth and bud leaves produce energy for growing buds, this is why the fan leaves are the first to yellow during budding as bud leaves are more important by then so the nitrogen is drawn out and provided to areas of the plant that's still growing (buds and bud leaves)

rollinronan said:

i know that fan leaves produce energy for vegatative growth and bud leaves produce energy for growing buds, this is why the fan leaves are the first to yellow during budding as bud leaves are more important by then so the nitrogen is drawn out and provided to areas of the plant that's still growing (buds and bud leaves)

Click to expand...

I don't know if trimming all of the big fan leaves will force the plant to suck up energy from the lateral leaves and make them yellow instead of growing while feeding.

If you are asking.. Fan leaves are the big ones that grow out away from the plant. If you look at them they are just leaves.. no thrichomes. If you look at the leaves that surround the calyxes on the bud itself.. when you look at these leaves covered in thrichomes.. they look like the are covered in SUGAR.. or commonly called "sugar leaves".

If you take what I just said as "a given".. then I can ask.. what do you mean?.. what are you trying to accomplish?
I've toyed with removing leaves... and may be able to offer my experiences if I know what you are doing and what you want to find out?

I'm pretty sure what you all keep referring to as "sugar leaves" are the little leaves, which i believe to be the "water leaves".

and the big ass leaves, "fan leaves" are actually the ones that store most of the nutrients & the plant will use them up when most or all the nutrients in the soil is gone.

Like i said, i wouldn't mess with anything while in flowering. Usually you want to have everything plucked and bent before flowering so the stress doesn't mess with bud production. Plus it's hard as hell to bend branches on older plants, because the stems become super hard & break very very easy.

cowell said:

If you are asking.. Fan leaves are the big ones that grow out away from the plant. If you look at them they are just leaves.. no thrichomes. If you look at the leaves that surround the calyxes on the bud itself.. when you look at these leaves covered in thrichomes.. they look like the are covered in SUGAR.. or commonly called "sugar leaves".

If you take what I just said as "a given".. then I can ask.. what do you mean?.. what are you trying to accomplish?
I've toyed with removing leaves... and may be able to offer my experiences if I know what you are doing and what you want to find out?

Click to expand...

purpz said:

I'm pretty sure what you all keep referring to as "sugar leaves" are the little leaves, which i believe to be the "water leaves".

and the big ass leaves, "fan leaves" are actually the ones that store most of the nutrients & the plant will use them up when most or all the nutrients in the soil is gone.

Like i said, i wouldn't mess with anything while in flowering. Usually you want to have everything plucked and bent before flowering so the stress doesn't mess with bud production. Plus it's hard as hell to bend branches on older plants, because the stems become super hard & break very very easy.

Click to expand...

Sugar or Water leaves? Which is it? +rep for right answer. You can still see some big fan leaves on the big plant and the other 2 have all of the leaves from halfway on up the stems.

that's fine. You can lollipop the bottom half of your plant and it's all good too. You may want to consider that as opposed to just taking off lower leaf growth... which from my own experimentation, didn't really do much but slow the plant down by a week.

cowell said:

If you are asking.. Fan leaves are the big ones that grow out away from the plant. If you look at them they are just leaves.. no thrichomes. If you look at the leaves that surround the calyxes on the bud itself.. when you look at these leaves covered in thrichomes.. they look like the are covered in SUGAR.. or commonly called "sugar leaves".

Click to expand...

thankyou for clarifying that

the only leaves you should ever trim are the ones that are 90-100% yellow/brown or just plain dead
green leaves are valuble to the plant because they produce energy
if they are yellow the plant has "decided" (for lack of any other word) that it does not need these leaves as much as the ones that are still green, so it moves the nitrogen to places it is needed (eg growing tips and bud/sugar leaves)
this happens for 2 reasons - A) these (usally lower) leaves are not getting sufficent light so chlorophyl is wasted here......hence wasting energy
B) the plant is N defficent (not a problem for you so dont worry about it)

dont ever remove bud/sugar leaves unless they are dieing or dead.

rollinronan said:

thankyou for clarifying that

the only leaves you should ever trim are the ones that are 90-100% yellow/brown or just plain dead
green leaves are valuble to the plant because they produce energy
if they are yellow the plant has "decided" (for lack of any other word) that it does not need these leaves as much as the ones that are still green, so it moves the nitrogen to places it is needed (eg growing tips and bud/sugar leaves)
this happens for 2 reasons - A) these (usally lower) leaves are not getting sufficent light so chlorophyl is wasted here......hence wasting energy
B) the plant is N defficent (not a problem for you so dont worry about it)

dont ever remove bud/sugar leaves unless they are dieing or dead.

Click to expand...

Agreed. So the conclusion is that fan leaves are just called "fan leaves"(?) and the smaller ones by the flowers are "sugar leaves"(?). Correct?

I think this thread is at a close, unless someone out there can fill in the blanks to info that has been skipped here.

i think thats it!